Nitrogen 2000 — The Dutch Farmer Struggle

Nitrogen 2000 — The Dutch Farmer Struggle

Via Mercola

Story at-a-glance

• Dutch cattle farmers own 70% of Holland, but the government is pushing for a forced buy out of 50% of their land, claiming it’s necessary to reduce pollution
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• Experts say the move to get rid of farmers isn’t about the environment but, rather, taking control of valuable land
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• The government’s computer models, which are used to support its plan to reduce nitrogen by buying up farmland, are based on a flawed assumption that nitrogen migrates from one field to the next
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• The push to remove farmers from their land is being driven by NGOs, which are primarily funded by the government, making them government extensions
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• A $25 billion government fund, created using taxpayers’ money, has been established to buy farmers’ land; once a farmer sells their land, they’ll be legally prohibited from establishing a farm anywhere else in Europe

Nitrogen 2000 is an important 45-minute documentary on the Dutch farmer struggle of 2019-23. Dutch cattle farmers own 70% of Holland, but in 2019, the government began pushing for a forced buy out of 50% of their land,1 claiming it’s necessary to reduce pollution. But for the approximately 60,000 farmers in the Netherlands,2 agriculture is a way of life, often passed down through the generations — one that’s necessary to supply food for the population.

According to a press release for the film, “Dutch farmers produce the most food per hectare of farmers anywhere, and the Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products.”3

Farms are interwoven into the fabric of their communities, such that “everyone, even if you live in the city like in Amsterdam or in Rotterdam, in a five-minute drive you will see cows, you will see farmland … it’s so ingrained in our society, in our way of life, that farmers are part of our culture. Everyone has someone in their family who was once a farmer,” says political commentator Sietske Bergsma.4

But as professor Han Lindeboom, a marine ecologist at Wageningen University & Research, explains in the film, “The government has taken the stance that we have a huge problem with nature and that due to EU regulations we should save nature. And nowadays we want to solve that problem by simply eliminating a large amount of farms.”5

The Dutch government claims it needs to nationalize half of cattle farmers’ land — an amount equal to about one-third of Holland — in order to reduce nitrogen, but experts say this plan is seriously flawed.

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